June 11, 2012

Nodal development apparently still the hot planning buzzword here

I'm a little confused. A fair amount of the private response I got back on my nodal development critique last year was that Tompkins County wasn't as excited about that particular phrase any longer and I was shooting at something...

September 2, 2011

Nodal development in a walled city

Gate at Gengenbach. It's hard to imagine a more perfect nodal development scenario than a walled city on a trade route surrounded by farms. We don't tend to do things that way any longer. Even the German village I described...

August 27, 2011

Vacationing in a nodal development paradise

When we went to visit Angelika's family in Germany, I thought of it more as a vacation than as a land use planning study. Somehow, though, once you start looking at land use in one place, it's hard to stop...

June 22, 2011

New Urbanist challenges my rural critique

I think it's mostly an exercise in missing the point, but Robert Steuteville seems to think that nodal development outside of cities is a great model. He doesn't actually address the question of whether it can work, which was my...

June 13, 2011

'Rural node' planning won't work in Tompkins

The Ithaca Journal published a Guest Viewpoint piece of mine about nodal development. Unfortunately I was away and minimizing web contact, so I'm a little late, er, reporting on my own writing. Squeezing that piece into 500 words was extremely...

March 5, 2011

So if not nodal development...

My last piece on nodal development felt like a demolition, throwing an idea meant for urban areas out of the rural planning conversation. (I doubt its supporters feel I succeeded, but that's normal.) The question that always comes after demolition,...

March 2, 2011

Not (nearly) big enough for nodes

When I first started going to meetings about the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan, the idea of building on existing transportation nodes seemed sensible and appealing, at least when compared to scattering houses across the landscape. As I've learned more about...

December 7, 2010

Selling a Development Vision

The Route 13/366 Corridor Study, for all its flaws, attempts to sell a vision of Dryden. One key piece that it tries to sell is a new "nodal development" east of the NYSEG building, along the 13/366 intersection. The description...

December 6, 2010

The Route 13/366 Corridor Study and the Proposed Commercial Zone

When it appeared, I pretty much loathed the Route 13/366 Corridor Study. It was a zoning plan that pretended to be about traffic, with an outcome I think I can describe as predetermined at best by the dreams of the...

July 23, 2010

A corridor of lumpy sprawl

When I first looked over the new draft of the proposed zoning law, I expected not to love the hamlet zoning. The response to the Lucente proposal had been much more eager than I was happy about, and I wasn't...

July 20, 2010

Many changes to the hamlet and commercial zoning

In an earlier post, I wrote that: The hamlet zoning density blasted up from a little over four to as much as ten units per acre, while still specifying, well, little vision for what a hamlet should look like. They...

July 19, 2010

So how did we get to "nodal development"?

If putting dense-ish semi-suburban developments outside of cities is a bad idea, and creating them requires deeply disruptive cataclysmic change, how did we come to a point where nodal development seems like a great idea to mostly well-intentioned people in...

A nodal development surprise

I went to do some more research on nodal development, and was surprised to find it didn't have a Wikipedia entry. The closely related Smart Growth, New Urbanism, and Transit-Oriented Development all have entries... So I tried Google. Much to...

May 9, 2010

Planners and Developers as Special Interest Group

I was disappointed to find that Andres Duany, one of the writers of Suburban Nation, a book that had inspired me to rethink my views on planning years ago, has fallen into the trap of thinking that his building projects...

May 17, 2008

Getting to Nodal Development in Dryden

[Update: I no longer think this is a good idea. See the category listing for more information on why. This piece in particular is a concise summary.] [This is long - it's a complex subject and a couple of years...

November 13, 2007

Some final thoughts on the 13/366 Corridor Study

While sorting through the piles of paper that accumulated during election season, I found my printouts of the Route 13/366 Corridor Study, and remembered that I'd promised long ago to write up my concluding thoughts at the end of a...

October 3, 2007

Reading the Route 13/366 study

I finally got to sit down and read the Route 13/366 Corridor Management Plan last night. After disliking the initial visions presented, wondering if and when the report would ever appear, and then finding the opening of the plan discouraging,...

September 21, 2007

Corridor Study updated

I complained a while ago about the disappearing Route 13/366 Corridor Study. I see today that a Route 13/366 Corridor Study that looks very different from what we saw at the public meeting has finally gone up on the Tompkins...

May 12, 2007

Is strengthening Varna possible?

I've criticized the Route 13/366 Corridor Study for ignoring the existing Varna node in favor of looking further east, around NYSEG. Based on conversations I had at their April presentation, it seems pretty clear that the planners automatically removed all...

April 28, 2007

Cornell t-GEIS study looks at roads

Back on the 18th of April, the Cornell Transportation-General Environmental Impact Study (t-GEIS) held an open house event much like the one they held in May. While the one in May started with a clean slate of maps, this one...

April 25, 2007

Wow. Awful plan.

People in Dryden frequently complain when you threaten to put a trail across their property. I was happy tonight to see that the Route 13/366 Corridor Study plan shows a new trail going across my lot, something I'd never have...

May 2, 2004

County Planning comes to Dryden

As part of the process for the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan, the Planning Department held an open house and meeting on Thursday at the Dryden Town Hall. The open house started at three, with displays up and Deputy Commissioner of...

March 25, 2004

County Comprehensive Plan examined in Varna

Senior Planner Heather Filiberto and Planning Analyst Tom Mank of the Tompkins County Planning Department presented work on the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan last night at the Varna Community Center. The scope of the county plan is very different from...